It's Hot in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

  Eddie usually took a fifty-dollar Hampton Jitney coach bus back and forth to Manhattan. A few times every summer, when he had a meeting to rush to, he’d splurge on a helicopter seat. At six hundred dollars a head, this was the cheapest commuter route to the city—through the clouds—a fraction of what chartering a whole helicopter would cost.

  A billion dollars’ worth of private jets and Sikorsky helicopters lined up beside the single, cracked runway in East Hampton. Eddie knew the most coveted jet, among the people with serious money, was the G650, with a sticker price of about $65 million. “Look, kids, at those jets pulling out of the hangar. See that passenger staircase opening like a clam? The pilot’s gonna walk down those stairs to greet his passengers. Their car will pull up right to the plane. How cool is that?”

  “Can we do that?” Theo asked. “Can we drive up to one and get in?”

  Caroline rolled her eyes at her husband. She didn’t need to say what she was thinking.

  Eddie was so mesmerized by the Hamptons cash oozing around him that he couldn’t respond to her. (He was, of course, breaking therapy rule number nine: listen to your spouse when he or she obviously cares about something.)

  A Lexus sedan pulled up to a jet to Eddie’s left. The ground crew laid a mat at the bottom of the plane’s staircase to ensure the owner had minimal contact with actual concrete.

  On Eddie’s right, an extremely stylish young woman strutted up to a copter, leading her King Charles spaniel with a Goyard leash. Right before stepping into his Sikorsky, she held the hand of that loaded prick who never once remembered Eddie’s name.

  Eddie pointed the kids’ attention now to a large jet landing, the thrust reversers slamming on hard. He said to them, “I’ve been inside one of those G5 babies once; like thirteen seats or something. Some have showers in them.” Maybe one day, Eddie thought to himself. “It was with a developer to see some land for a mall in New Haven. Remember that guy, Caroline?”

  “Eddie, I don’t.”

  And then, he whispered to her, “He was an asshole anyway, treated everyone who worked for him on the plane like shit.” Eddie recalled that the guy had screamed at the flight attendant because she’d added a kiwi to his fruit salad, and served 2 percent yogurt when the wife had explicitly ordered nonfat—She said no fat, not low fat!

  Eddie knew he’d never abuse his staff, no matter how much money he made—granted, he had to admit to himself, his two assistants, Maryanne and Eleanor, would beat the crap out of him if he did.

  All these private aircrafts got Eddie wondering about his French partners, drooling about all the cash he’d see in a few weeks. If it all went the way the French said, maybe he’d be G5 rich? Eight-seater rich would do his family of four—a used Citation CJ4 was perhaps a couple of mill, tops. So what if the French weren’t the most ethical bunch? The plan was rock solid.

  “I’m not clear about your schedule, honey,” Caroline said. “We’re going to be late for camp, and I don’t want to rush you, but why are we waiting over here when your charter group is back there?”

  “Well, then I know something else!” he said, as he kneeled down and hugged both kids at once. “Get this everyone: the Clarkson kids are all going to be late for camp today. Fun Daddy’s going to be late for work too. We’re all in trouble!” The kids clapped with glee, though they knew their mom didn’t appreciate this one bit. They also knew she hated the nickname he’d given himself.

  “Honey, please . . .” Caroline’s protestations were useless.

  Eddie was in one of his moods, possibly trying to surprise her or to earn her affections. Early this morning, after a somewhat strained weekend, she and Eddie had warmed up to each other. He’d pulled her to him in bed, wrapping his brawny legs around her. He wiped her thick hair off her face, locked eyes with the woman he adored and said, “I love you. We can do this. I’m sorry I had to work and be at the club with those clients and left you . . .”

  “I don’t mind you leaving me, it’s just you don’t warn me, so I can’t plan. I have four client meetings today and couldn’t prepare all day Sunday. And . . .” she’d kept listing reasons that would explain her aloofness. She worried that he’d pick up on something. She was avoiding sleeping with him because she didn’t want to deal with sexual whiplash between him and Ryan.

  “I couldn’t be prouder of my wife, okay? I’m sorry I was a dick.” In bed, the Monday morning light coming through their shades, he kissed her forehead hard, as if for emphasis.

  “I’m sorry I was in a foul mood,” she replied, yanking the covers under her arm. The playing field was a little more even now, and things were different. She felt more powerful, if, admittedly, a hundred times more anxious. “Last night, our usual deal, and I just wanted you to bring in dinner like we planned.”

  Eddie wasn’t listening to her apologies or trying to figure out what was really on her mind. He had other plans for her, now burrowing his head under the comforter.

  “Eddie, stop, c’mon, I have to . . .”

  “You have nothing to do but lie back and let me make you happy,” he said.

  “Eddie, I’m just . . .” She tried to pull him up by the armpits. It had been five days, but she was still worried he’d detect Ryan somehow. As she later confided to Annabelle, she’d taken multiple baths, and used up six Summer’s Eve douche bottles in the past week (even stopping at the drugstore and using one in the Starbuck’s bathroom on the way to pick up Eddie on Friday because she couldn’t calm her nerves). She whispered beneath the covers, “Just kiss me instead. Please, we have to rush, the kids and their first day at camp. Your helicopter. I know you’re away for ten days, just . . .”

  Eddie wasn’t having it. All his golf buddies agreed: no better tactic for calming down a pissed off wife than going down on her slowly and not making her fuck you back. He could jerk off in the shower anyway. Eddie knew he was a strategic motherfucker if nothing else; he needed Caroline in a good mood for the family surprise he’d planned—one that had a teeny-weeny possibility of not getting the reaction he was after.

  A helicopter hovered over the painted circle in the distance, swaying a bit, before landing and sending dust everywhere around it. Caroline, Gigi, and Theo turned their backs to the sandstorm, and Eddie shielded the kids’ eyes. He then scooped them up and started walking toward the gate to the tarmac. He motioned for the porter to follow with his bags in the trolley.

  “Eddie, your group helicopter is coming at eight-thirty, not earlier, that big one out there, it’s not the Blade. The Blade woman isn’t even out here yet,” Caroline yelled to him. Caroline and everyone out here who didn’t own their own helicopter knew all about Blade, the app that allowed any shmuck to push a button and order a six-hundred-dollar seat on a communal helicopter—as easy-peasy as booking an Uber car.

  But Eddie kept walking, both kids firmly under his arms. She knew he had organized something he hadn’t told her about. Again.

  The Blade hostess came out in her sexy Star Trek uniform: a tight jumpsuit with navy stripes. On one arm, goody bags filled with Rag & Bone clothes she’d sized for their most attractive customers (the others got Masters and Dynamic studio headphones).

  Caroline walked over to her. “Clarkson, he’s already out on the tarmac for some reason heading toward that huge, silver one. But that isn’t his ride, right?”

  “We don’t have a Clarkson on the eight-thirty,” the Blade lady said.

  “I made the reservation myself,” Caroline told her. “Can you look again?”

  “Eddie canceled that one,” announced Blade’s owner, Rob Wiesenthal, as he approached Caroline. He was wearing one of his Thom Browne striped retro sweaters, looking as if he’d just enjoyed a good cricket match in Sussex. Rob and Eddie had met at the club and joshed with each other for being the worst players there. Rob told Caroline, “Your husband ordered his own copter to the city, that big mack daddy, Sikorsky. He added an hour tour. Look.”

  “I’m a bad flyer, Rob. I’m not getting into
that thing,” Caroline said.

  “Can we send you along with a mimosa? I think your husband’s got a surprise for you.” Rob rubbed her upper arm and winked. “Go on, don’t let on I told you anything. But you can do it; it’s got two pilots and can land anywhere. The wind might make it bounce a little on takeoff, but don’t worry. And, by the way, congratulations. He must be doing very well.”

  Caroline had no idea what was going on. All she knew was that the kids would be late for camp on their first day. And that Eddie had spent a big bundle of the cash she wasn’t supposed to know he’d earned.

  “Mom!” Theo yelled. “We’re going on a ride! C’mon! Daddy says you’re a party pooper!”

  Caroline walked onto the tarmac, wondering if she was confronting her fear of flying out of guilt or a need to keep up with Fun Daddy. She crouched as she approached the captain, who guided her under the propeller and into the cabin. She’d never been so close to a helicopter and wondered if people ever got decapitated on that huge propeller above her. Once inside, she buckled her belt so tightly, her flesh curled around it. “Eddie, what on earth?” she asked. “What is going on?” Then she whispered to him, so the kids couldn’t hear, “This is like eight thousand for the morning trip alone, right? If you take it for yourself to fly around and go into the city?” She’d guessed right, she knew, she’d often asked Annabelle how many thousands it cost to fly private jets and helicopters.

  “Nah, it’s just, well, just trust me,” Eddie said. “You’re gonna love how it feels! I want you to see something better from up high.”

  Caroline now knew what was coming. Over and over, he had asked if they could buy the property on the ocean bluff that no one else dared purchase. Over and over, she had said no. Building on that land was too hard a project for her to manage with the kids and her clients. She didn’t add that she might have one foot out the door anyway, and you didn’t start building a new home from scratch with your marriage in trouble.

  Caroline tightened her children’s seat belts, and they started to squeal as the helicopter lifted off the pavement. The claustrophobic cabin rattled under the propeller, as the gears tilted the rotors from ascension to forward motion. Caroline gripped Eddie’s thigh. She wasn’t a good flyer in a 747 Jumbo Jet.

  She looked at her kids, to see if they were as anxious as she was. They were oblivious to the grinding of the machinery and the distance between them and the receding ground. They pressed their noses against the window in anticipation of the rest of their father’s extravaganza.

  After a few minutes, Gigi turned to Caroline and said, “Mom, do you have water?” Her face was green. Caroline prayed Eddie had the bag in his pocket. She whispered to her husband, trying not to instigate their eighteenth fight of the weekend. “Eddie, this is so sweet, this little trip, but you know I get scared and Gigi, well, you know what happens when she flies.” She paused and added, “Every time.”

  Eddie patted his wife’s hand. “Gigi won’t puke, right, honey?” He rubbed Gigi’s thigh hard, willing his daughter to get with his program. And then he whispered to Caroline, “Let’s all stay positive, look at her, she’s having a blast! It’s only fifteen minutes, and we’ll be back on the ground.”

  Suddenly the helicopter banked sharply left toward the ocean, as if under attack from the Luftwaffe. And, just as she figured, they were now gunning at full speed over the coast toward Wiborg Beach and along Further Lane.

  “Look at the size of those homes, Jesus,” Eddie said, salivating. “None as big as Ron Perelman’s back on Georgica Pond we passed, but look, that huge one is the Millshore Club where your mom’s friend Annabelle practically lives, then Jerry Seinfeld’s . . .”

  Caroline was calming down a little. It was pretty spectacular to look at these 15,000-square-foot, ocean-front estates from the air; they looked like dollhouses, with hedges outlining the property and vast lawns and tennis courts behind them. Most had swimming pools between the house and the cliff. She knew these houses all from the walks she’d been taking on the beach since she was small. “They look like castles, not homes,” she said.

  “Now, we’re getting closer! Daddy has a surprise for everyone!” Eddie unbuckled the kids’ belts and put Theo on his lap. Her son was excited to see what his father had planned, but Gigi was only feeling sicker.

  Eddie knocked on the cockpit window behind him. “Guys, do me a favor, make some circles around it, like I said, just go slow and really low!”

  The helicopter jerked again, the rotors pivoting into the wind. The cabin bounced as it flew over the ocean, the propellers battling the gusts. Caroline imagined the East Hampton Star headline, “Wealthy, Local-turned-Manhattan Developer Perishes in Crash—his Wife and Kids too.” She whispered to Eddie, “Is that grinding sound . . . normal?”

  “It’s fine,” he said. He needed her on his side.

  The machine fought the elements as it circled around. Caroline badly wanted the flying machine to land; she started looking for a clearing below as if she could bring the thing down herself. Theo and Eddie, boys being boys, got even more pumped with the thrill of the maneuvers. They both stared out the window, their heads bounced in unison, giddy.

  Gigi, the other female, implored her mom, “I want to go down!” She started crying and coughing. “Now! I don’t feel well!” Eddie pulled out another Ziploc from his left pocket and handed it to his wife without even looking her way.

  “Look!” Eddie yelled. “Look at our new home.”

  “Where is it? That big one?” Theo asked, wrapping his elbow around his father’s neck.

  “No, the land down there, that mountain of tan next to the big house.”

  It was an untamed acre on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic, four lots from Egypt Beach. After great logistical and legal difficulty, the new buyers (or suckers) could prop up the dune, pour a complex foundation, and build a house. She and Eddie would kill each other, fighting over everything. Eddie had certainly not heeded item number sixteen in marital therapy: no commando, unilateral home decisions. Caroline liked to walk to the beach, not live on it. Her kids could bike to the beach as she had.

  She put her hand on her husband’s thigh. This was a time to be nice to him; everything was different now that she’d done what she’d done with Ryan. “You’re crazy, but that’s something I knew early on,” Caroline said. “I’m happy for you. It’s what you wanted. You’ve worked hard, honey, to get here.” She kissed his cheek. She decided she would let him develop the property as he wished. Who knew if she’d even be around for the housewarming?

  “I did it for you,” he said, and he kissed his wife. “You’ll learn to love it.”

  Magnanimity was meant for the person who received it; not for the person who doled it out.

  Just then, Gigi threw up all over both of them. She had missed the Ziploc by a good two feet.

  Chapter 22

  Drop-off and Go

  Back at the East Hampton Airport lounge, Eddie dropped Caroline and the kids off before flying into the city alone on the huge Sikorsky, and despite the stain on his pants from Gigi’s bout of motion sickness, he was feeling like a boss. Caroline hoped this wasn’t a pattern, no matter how much money he had.

  As she passed through the Blade lounge with her kids, Rob Wiesenthal patted her on the back. “What a piece of property! He’s got elephant balls not to tell you,” Rob said. Then he laughed and walked away, marveling at that Eddie character. Before going into his office, he turned back and said, “My wife would murder me if I did that!”

  Though Caroline and Theo were an hour late to All Stars Soccer Academy, it took the usual two minutes to get Theo settled at his new camp. Caroline knew her timid little Gigi would cling a bit even at a pony camp in her own Daddy’s barn.

  This morning, Caroline wanted to check on the stables anyway. Maybe she’d find a little time with Thierry to see how the intra-barn relations were going, to make sure he was comfortable in the vast operation Eddie had created. Even if she never wanted
to get involved in Eddie’s projects, it wouldn’t hurt to have the wife wander around a bit gathering intelligence. If there were real discord, Eddie might be too distracted by bigger things to even notice.

  Caroline replayed the argument between Thierry and Philippe and Marcus in her mind from the barn party. They were hiding something, and Marcus McCree, that upstanding former cop and reputable businessman, was lying to her and to them about errands he was on. Eddie wouldn’t let anyone skim anything, any amount; he and that ol’ schoolmarm Maryanne raked through every expense. So, what were they hiding? And how was Marcus involved?

  Thierry was placing heavy boxes of veterinary supplies in the tack room when Caroline walked in, Gigi still holding her mother’s hand. His thin frame highlighted with the sun streaming through and the dust flying around him, he asked, “What happened to my helper this morning? I thought you were going to come a half hour before and help me get the ponies ready.”

  Gigi looked up at her mom, hoping she’d come up with a better excuse than that she’d taken her first ride in a helicopter and vomited all over her parents.

  Thierry smiled at Gigi, his own niece’s closest summer friend, very familiar with her shyness. “Rosie was here, missing you, but don’t worry. There’s always plenty of work,” he said, winking at Caroline. He pulled his hat off, folded it, and shoved it into his back pocket. His dark ponytail, four inches long and filled with curls, hung low on the back of his neck, like a Colonial gentleman’s.

  Caroline asked Gigi, “Honey, do you want to go to camp with Thierry or . . .”

  “I mean, do I just start riding or do I help the other kids first?” Gigi asked, rubbing her shoulder against her mother’s hip.

  “How about you go do what Rosie’s doing on Sauerkraut, which is just a walk trot position class?” Thierry said. “They haven’t really started; Scooby-Doo is out there, honey. Come with me.” He took Gigi’s hand and half-dragged her out to ring two, where eight kids under twelve were just beginning their lesson.